A ship was sailing with the wind across the sea. The crew moved with practiced calm — tying ropes, adjusting sails — while a black flag was hoisted high and snapped against the sky. A man stood at the wheel, hands firm on the spokes, watching the water churn away beneath the hull. From behind him a small voice asked, softly and without fear.
"Dad, where are we?" He was five then, all wide eyes and questions.
Skeeth bent and picked him up, smiling like he always did when the boy's sleep had been deep and honest. "Did you get a tight sleep, son? Look at those eyes." They laughed together, the sort of laughter that felt like sunlight after rain.
The ship had long since reached the city. Skeeth carried Zord down the gangplank and they walked through streets that still smelled of salt and fish, toward the home they shared. "What do you think your mother cooked?" Skeeth asked, hopeful for a small domestic comfort.
"Fish stew," Zord answered, confident as only a child can be.
But the time was different then; the world had already started to tilt. Word had spread through the crew: the city was infected by a new plague, a deathly thing with no mercy. It did not spare anyone. It crept in, taking breath and warmth and life. Quella — Skeeth's wife, Zord's mother — was among the taken.
The door to the place where she lay opened and it felt like stepping into a storm. It was a makeshift hospital hall, noisy and numb at once. Dead bodies lay in rows, faces turned away as if the world could look no longer. Skeeth rushed forward, Zord shadowing him with the unsteady step of a child who clutches a father's sleeve. Quella's face was faded; her skin had gone pale; her hair was heavy and black against the pillow. Skeeth dropped to his knees and gripped her warm hand, though it was only the memory of warmth that held him. He cried openly, a raw, human sound that broke something in the room.
Zord watched his mother like someone watching a sleeping stranger. He reached out and took his father's other hand. The moment hit him the way grief hits children: sudden, heavy, absolute. Later he would remember the sand falling over the coffin, the way the world seemed to shrink to that small mound of earth. That day they buried Quella. Tears fell, and the sky did not stay small.
Time rolled on and things changed with a speed that made their roots shiver. Skeeth was promoted — his honor rising as if ceremony and rank could shield a heart from loss. Zord was left with a hollow at his center and a strange, heavy gift from his father. It was a sword, beautifully made and humming with a presence that Zord could not yet name.
"It may look like a normal gift," Skeeth told him, pressing the sword into his son's young hands, "but remember — it's the greatest pirate treasure."
At first Zord took those words as comfort, a father's attempt to soften pain with a story. But as he grew, the gift revealed more. There was a book left behind by Skeeth — pages written in an ancient language whose shapes seemed to contain power. Within its lines were lessons not only of swordsmanship but of the words that wove the blade's strength. Zord read obsessively, learning and practicing until his knuckles bled and the sword became not just an object but an extension of his breath.
He trained, and then he learned other things. He became a detective, solving mysteries and unmasking murders in the parts of the city where shadows lingered longest. He earned honor through keen observation and steady hands. He mastered technique after technique: Gravel — a strike so solid it would shatter a boulder into dust — among others. Sometimes, late at night, the sword glowed with a faint inner light, responding to his mind the way a friend responds to a familiar call.
But the city had teeth. The king, the courtiers, and the men who pulled strings from the dark seemed to want to use him — not as a man but as a tool. One night, when the moon slid thin over the rooftops, Zord left a message on the desk in his home and walked away. He could not be a pawn. He wanted meaning that was his own. He moved to a town called Bloomberg City and there met Trail, a man who offered him not servitude but friendship. Trail's offer was simple and honest: work with me, not under me.
After that, rain became a frequent companion. It fell in sheets and in whispers; it made everything feel like a confession. One day, under a storm-dark sky, Zord found himself in the middle of chaos. Black soldiers lay dead on the road, their armor slick with rain and something darker. Zord walked among them, his steps slow but deliberate. A new grave had been dug beside his mother's, and the sight of it made old hurts come back like fresh wounds.
Hundreds of soldiers had been present in the city, though the elite ones were away fighting on distant fronts. The black tide had taken children, imprisoning them like animals. Zord could not stand idle. He moved with a ferocity that was almost machine-like, rescuing those kids with a kind of ruthless efficiency. He became, for a time, something other than a man — a monster in the eyes of those who watched him cut through their ranks. After the fighting, he sat on a cart with the rescued children. The horse walked slowly, and Zord tossed them food he had scavenged — thrown in the tired, clumsy way of someone who has been hungry himself.
The black tide's grip loosened. Lyoth, whatever he was — a shadow with taste for chaos — felt something shift. The darkness fled, as if it had been a curtain and someone had opened a window. Lyoth whistled once, low and dangerous. "Reaper, destroy whoever it is," he ordered, voice sharp as a knife.
Hundreds of soldiers answered, charging toward a point only they could see. Zord met them with a move he called Chronological Swing. The strike was precise, a moment of motion that cut through ranks and will; when it ended, the field was still. Zord felt something then — a coldness that turned his skin the way winter turns rivers brittle. He sensed a dangerous power, a signature he recognized: one of the Bugan Means children, creatures he had learned to fear.
From the sky the Black Reaper descended. It was sudden and terrible: wings sharp as knives, shadowed form moving with purposeful silence. It scanned the field, circled like a vulture, and then found nothing but discarded armor and the breathing of those it sought. Zord had already vanished, slipping into the depths like a thought leaving a mouth.
"I have to wait," he said to himself, voice small against the roar of the storm. "Otherwise everyone will—" He walked and walked, his steps leading him away from fires and into quieter places.
Meanwhile, at the top of a castle in Wingman City, Luxorious sat by a window that overlooked the world and unfolded a paper given to him by an old colleague. The paper carried news and the weight of decisions yet to be made. Far below, Bloomberg City stirred.
Inside another castle, Galaguard heard a shout that sounded like a hammer on iron. "How is that your man is causing so much rebellion in the city?" the king demanded.
Galaguard's eyes were sharp but tired. "They are hungry," he said simply. "They only want food."
Azerius's face split into anger like cracking stone. "Did I not do enough to provide for you? Remember, these are your times for which sins you have committed — and for that—"
Galaguard's voice didn't waver. "Name your terms."
Azerius stopped, the air tense around his words. "Well. Stay out of the city. That's my term. Don't cause rebellion in this beautiful place."
"I swear I will not break those terms from today," Galaguard promised.
"Good. Now you should go." With that Azerius dismissed him.
Galaguard left the castle and gathered his army. "Listen," he said to them with the kind of authority that brooks no argument. "I don't want anyone to cause a rebellion inside the city. Go home. Go as low as you can. Meet your families — if not, the punishment will be severe." He turned and walked back to his camp, his cloak wet from the rain, his eyes already on the next move.